


i hate the colour blue ('cause that's what i feel without you)

by windonmain



Series: what i feel without you [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, F/M, M/M, Mentions of alcohol, Past Relationship(s), Post-Break Up, Sad Ending, Suicidal Thoughts, mentions of overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 12:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15863289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windonmain/pseuds/windonmain
Summary: He tries to keep himself in the dark when it comes to Dan nowadays. The reason he tells himself every time is that he doesn't need to know what is happening in Dan's life because it no longer is his business. Truth be told, Phil's afraid of what he would find out. He has heard rumours, of course, some fleeting conversations whispered between some of his friends, words he's not supposed to hear.He tries to keep himself in the dark because he's not sure if he could handle knowing that Dan's happier without him.It's been a year since they broke up, and Phil is still picking up the pieces.





	i hate the colour blue ('cause that's what i feel without you)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to start by saying that this is a fic I thought I would never write. I usually don't write or read angst; I absolutely cannot handle sad endings. However, the way I process negative feelings (anxiety, sadness, anger) in my own life sometimes is by writing. I bottle my feelings up quite often and at some point I just have to let them out somehow. And that is exactly why this fic was born. 
> 
> Without any further ado, I present to you a work that I poured all of my negative feelings into, and it doesn't have a happy ending (or I guess it depends on what you think is a happy/sad ending). If you're a sensitive bean like I am usually (or if mentions of suicide, overdose and alcohol trigger you), maybe don't read this. Take care of yourself, okay?
> 
> (vaguely inspired by Emma Blackery's song "What I Felt With You")

Phil stares at the calendar on his desk, the big red circled date on it mocking him. He resists the urge to pick up the page and shred it to tiny little pieces and let them fall on the floor of his study. The room is quite bare with just a desk with some papers on it and a chair, if the piano in the corner of the room doesn't count.

He hasn't touched it in months and he's quite sure it has a big layer of dust on it, but there's nobody to see that, so he doesn't bother doing anything about it. There's no reason for Phil to even keep the piano around anymore considering it's broken and he cannot even play it but something keeps him from getting it thrown away.

Maybe it's the fact that it's one of the only things in the room reminding him of what the room used to be. What the apartment used to be. Phil's not sure why he wants to keep it as a reminder of that but perhaps he has always been a little bit of a masochist. 

Or maybe he's afraid that if he gets rid of the piano, he'll have nothing to prove that once he wasn't alone in the apartment too big for just one person. He'll have nothing to prove that Dan once existed in his life. No proof that Dan was once his whole life and when he left, he left an unfillable void not only to the apartment but to Phil's heart. 

It's the first time in a while Phil has let himself think about Dan. He cannot help but wonder if Dan is thinking about him too, wherever he is with whoever he currently is with. It would be their eighth anniversary together, if they hadn't broken up exactly a year ago that is. Phil almost lets out a sad laugh as he thinks how funny it is that Dan decided to walk out exactly on their seventh anniversary. Then again, Dan was always the dramatic one of them, so maybe it's not surprising at all. He knows how to make his exit, Phil thinks sarcastically and soon feels guilty for the venomous tone of the voice in his head.

The blame for their relationship crumbling obviously isn't completely on Dan, although it would be so easy to just push all the blame on him and defend himself with a lie. Phil's not like that, doesn't want to be like that anyway. He cannot say that he doesn't have moments when he feels so overwhelmingly angry about how things played out, when his anxiety gets so high he has to protect himself by blaming someone else.

It's so easy to blame Dan, almost too easy. He's the one who packed his bags and left, the one who blocked Phil everywhere, so he couldn't even get a chance at closure. He's the one who left Phil behind, left him collecting the pieces of his heart that the sound of the front door slamming shut shattered. It's been a year and Phil feels like he's slowly giving up on trying. He’s sure that something so badly broken can never be fixed.

He gets up from the desk, closes the calendar and puts it away with softly trembling hands. He leaves the room and turns off the lights, not looking back.

 

Phil tries to distract himself, but the apartment feels cold and empty and it keeps bringing his thoughts back to Dan. Is Dan truly happy now? Is he out there with someone new again, completely having brushed Phil off his mind? Does Dan remember it would their anniversary today?

He tries to keep himself in the dark when it comes to Dan nowadays. The reason he tells himself every time is that he doesn't need to know what is happening in Dan's life because it no longer is his business. Truth be told, Phil's afraid of what he would find out. He has heard rumours, of course, some fleeting conversations whispered between some of his friends, words he's not supposed to hear.

He tries to keep himself in the dark because he's not sure if he could handle knowing that Dan's happier without him.

The break up was hard on many aspects of their lives. They shared the same friend group which was bound to fall apart if they did - and it did. Many of their friends seemed to pick a side, and Phil couldn't really blame them for that. There were some people who just were closer to the other in general, and some who heard the other's side of the story and decided to ignore the other one completely. Of course, there were some who stayed friends with both, like Louise and PJ.

Phil winces as he remembers how Louise reacted to the news of their break up. She was devastated, truly, but soon her priority became to make sure they both stayed afloat. During the hardest times, she kept barging into Phil's apartment to cook, clean and take him outside from time to time. Without that, Phil would've probably never gotten out of bed again. 

PJ started to visit more often as well. His support wasn't as loud and as straight forward as Louise’s, but he constantly came over as well with the excuse of playing video games or watching a movie. He never tried to make Phil talk about the situation but instead he offered moments where he could just completely forget everything that had happened. Phil will forever be in his debt for that, although he knows PJ would just brush it off if he ever mentioned it.

Thinking about his friends, Phil plops down onto the couch. The crease in the corner is still there, perhaps because he has taken to sitting in Dan's place to keep it there. He sighs quietly at the thought and flicks the television on, his mind still wandering on the subject of his friends.

He feels guilty. His friends have been incredible the whole time with constant, loving support but Phil feels like he can't do anything else but let them down time after time by not getting over it. By not getting over Dan. It's been a year and Phil's still stuck in the past, unable to let go. He's trapped in the memories and the pain. He tried to let go once, once for all. He's afraid he will try it again.

 

Six months into the break up, Phil was at Louise's house at a small friend gathering. He remembers leaving to go to the bathroom but stopping as soon as he got out of the living room, having forgotten his phone on the table. As he turned around to go back to retrieve it, he heard someone say Dan's name.

“Did you hear about the girl Dan's been seeing?”

Phil backed out a little, listening to the murmurs and sighs coming from the living room. “I met her last week. She was... nice?” he heard Louise tell the group, her voice clearly strained. Phil could feel his blood run cold as he stood in the middle of the hallway, frozen in place. 

“Do you think he has moved on? He seemed happy when I last talked to him.”

Phil tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but couldn't. When he finally could move, he stumbled to the bathroom, locked the door and sat down. He took in deep breaths, his whole body shaking slightly. Dan was seeing someone else. Dan was seeing someone else. 

Dan was happy. Dan was happy. _Dan was happy_.

The feeling of that particular approaching anxiety attack is something that has never left Phil's mind. He remembers how he sat on the cold bathroom floor, trying to force the attack away. The attacks had become much worse after the break up, so much so that he was sometimes left unable to function after one. Phil had been through it so many times before, but he was still so afraid every time he could feel his anxiety rising.

He did some breathing exercises he had once looked up and tried to put himself together. Or at least enough so that he could go tell Louise he wasn't feeling well and that he would be heading home. It took him a couple of minutes but soon he was standing at Louise's door, only partially listening to her motherly advice of drinking tea and going straight to bed when he got home.

The journey home felt longer than ever, and when he finally reached the apartment's door, he was ready to collapse to the floor and just start crying. But when he stepped inside, he suddenly felt a wave of numbness rush through him. Phil slowly made his way to the lounge and sat down, listening to the silence. The anxiety was gone but so was everything else. He couldn't feel anything. Just the growing coldness and emptiness inside of him. After enduring so much pain for many months straight, you would think that the empty feeling would be a nice change. 

Somehow, it was even worse.

Phil tried to go to bed but the unsettling feeling of nothing made it impossible. He tossed and turned in his bed for hours before he got frustrated and headed to the bathroom. It was a surprise to him when he found Dan's old sleeping medication, tucked away in the medicine cabinet. Phil grabbed the pills and returned to the bedroom, swallowing one pill and burying himself back under the covers. 

_It didn't help._

When the morning arrived, there was an empty bottle lying on the floor with some pills scattered around it next to Phil's bed. Next to it was a bottle or liquor that had fallen over and leaked on the floor. As Louise arrived in the early hours to Phil's apartment, there was no response. She rang the doorbell, knocked, sent Phil multiple texts and called him many times. She had had a bad feeling about Phil the first thing when she woke up and panic slowly settled in her stomach. It didn't take her long to call the police.

 

The memory still makes Phil shiver. He leans back on the sofa and rubs his eyes that had started to burn a little. He still remembers when he woke up at the hospital to his brother yelling at him for being so stupid. He remembers how he looked at Martyn with hazy eyes and listened to him first yell at him and then break into tears. He remembers Martyn hugging him tightly and whispering: “It's going to be okay, little brother. You're going to be okay.”

Staying at the hospital was probably one of the worst experiences Phil had ever had. The side effects of the overdose were bad, and the guilt and the embarrassment he felt having done something so irresponsible and stupid were overwhelming. Phil remembers apologizing countless of times to Martyn, and soon after that to Louise. He never meant to make his loved ones to go through something like that.

He just wanted everything to stop for a while.

The next few months he spent at home up north, because Martyn or anyone else for that matter wouldn't let him stay on his own anymore. It felt nice to be back home, although the feeling of guilt was overwhelming every time he saw his parents look at him with worry. His family looked after him and finally when they deemed it was safe to let him return to London, he did. Of course, he was back on Louise's watch list and had to send constant updates to her and his family, so they would know he was alright. 

He started seeing a therapist too, which helped in its own way. Phil found out he had been keeping so many emotions locked deep inside of him and it was good to let them out from time to time. His progress was slow, but it was there. He slowly got better and at one point he noticed that he didn't think about Dan much at all anymore. Obviously, there were relapses, but he always discussed them with his therapist and learned to get over them. Everything was finally looking up.

 

Now, a year after his life broke apart, he's able to live his life almost normally. He's not happy, he can admit that much, but he isn't hanging on the past as much as he used to. It's the first time in ages he has thought back on his life before and after the break up and yes, he still misses many of the good memories he collected during those years of domestic bliss. You cannot undo seven years of love and commitment so easily.

However, he doesn't miss the time leading up to the break up. He sees the hurt they were both going through during those months before Dan walked out more clearly now, and a part of him understands why Dan left when he did. They were going to destroy each other, perhaps even worse than the break up destroyed them.

Phil is sure he will never be whole again. Losing a soulmate does that to a person.

Perhaps one day he will learn to live with it.

_Or perhaps he won’t._

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot give you an explanation of where the hell this fic came from. But it's here anyway! 
> 
> I've toyed with the thought of writing a one shot with Dan's point of view too and maybe one where they meet again? And perhaps the story _could_ have a happy ending after all... Please let me know what you think!
> 
> This fic hasn't been betaed and all the mistakes are mine. Bear in mind that English isn't my first language, and I actually never intended to post this when I started writing but it just... happened. It's definitely not perfect but I tried so that's all that counts, right?
> 
> My tumblr is [@enbydnp](http://enbydnp.tumblr.com), go ahead and drop by if you'd like! There is a fic post **[here](http://enbydnp.tumblr.com/post/177665347433/i-hate-the-colour-blue-cause-thats-what-i-feel)** , go reblog that as well!


End file.
